Love Is Blind in One Eye by Marianne Rogoff

Author:Marianne Rogoff [Rogoff, Marianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Women, nonfiction, self-discovery, Travel, travel stories, women, women travel, women's issues
ISBN: 9781940838830
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2016-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

Raven

You might say the streets flow sweetly through the night.

~ Xavier Villaurutia, Nostalgia for Death

David, Richie, and Raven were all together in San Miguel de Allende because Raven lived here now, and Raven was dying. I met David and Richie one night at Tio Lucas bar midway through their visit. Next day Raven drove past the three of us out walking in town and asked them later, who’s the babe? It’d been years since Lee called me Babe, and I liked it. We had one week. This created a glow around us, intensity to our time together that was a miniature, more frivolous mirror of Raven’s urgency. At the same time, we felt no hurry; the days were long.

I came here on my winter break from teaching and had created a schedule for myself because routines helped me feel more stable alone. The first few days I kept busy writing on my hotel balcony but the unfamiliar freedom of being away left me wandering streets or sitting in restaurants at odd times of day. I was learning new rhythms, the pace of the place: write early, Bellas Artes for cappuccino around 10, walk, visit the jardin around noon, Posada de las Monjas for siesta: nap, read, write, meet hotel neighbors, until at least past 7. Then slowly the nighttime streets of the cobblestone town came to life. Everyone gathered at the jardin, walking through or sitting on benches to watch the people go by. Teenagers and twenty-somethings were here to study Spanish, art, or Mexican culture. Worldly, retired Americans and Canadians came to escape winter or empty love lives, stretch dollars, or possibly, become someone else once more. In their midst: me at midlife, newlyunwed, traveling alone, for one week.

The night I met David and Richie I had been to a poetry reading (per schedule), was invited to join the poets for dinner but couldn’t handle the “group dynamics” and slipped away to Tio Lucas. I sat at David and Richie’s table in the bar where they were waiting to be called for dinner but they didn’t notice me. They were here for Raven and each other, plus (I later learned) they had wives at home and were practicing, after a number of lost marriages and relationships, being faithful men.

They paused from talking and found me there, “trying not to eavesdrop.”

“You grew up in New Jersey?”

“You’re Jews from New York? My ex is a Jew from Long Island!”

“You dance salsa? Let’s go dancing.”

We all had been at the same Ravi Shankar/George Harrison concert at Madison Square Garden in the ‘70s! It was like we’d known each other for years! I didn’t know which one to like more! Then their table was called and they politely went off to eat. Then Richie returned to invite me to join them, and so I did.

We discussed the menu, jazz, San Miguel, Raven, their wives, my ex, the midlife crisis.

One said it’s real; the other, not.

David called it, “Road not taken.”

Richie said, “Insatiable desire.”

I offered, “Paradise lost?”

David said, “Jung’s shadow.

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